Tuesday, July 31, 2012

In today’s first reading
from Jeremiah 14: 17-22, the prophet says to God: “Let my eyes stream with
tears day and night, without rest, over the great destruction which overwhelms
the virgin daughter of my people, over her incurable wound.”The incurable wound is sin that entered the
world with Adam and Eve’s disobedience and mistrust of God, their vying to be
like God.We all experience the
indomitable ego that wants to be like god, that wants to be “king of the
mountain,” that wants to remain on its “high horse,” no matter what.People throughout the world, in every culture
and in every walk of life, vie for first place, for being or staying on one’s “high
horse” or being “king of the mountain.”We see it in Assyria, in the fight between Palestine and Israel, in the
struggles in Africa during apartheid, in the civil wars fought on every
continent, in the holocaust; in the struggle between black, white, Native
Americans and the dominant culture, in politicians degrading one another, in
the fight of the rich to remain wealthy at the expense of the poor and on and
on throughout all of history to the present day. We see it in our families
between spouses and between parents and children. We see it in the struggle for
male or female dominancy. We see it in the crimes against women and children.
We see it in the drug lords and in the violence in our streets.

As I brought these issues
to the Lord in prayer this morning, I was reminded of what Jesus said to His
apostles in Mt. 20: 24: “You know that among the gentiles the rulers lord it
over them, and great men [and women] make their authority felt. Among you this
is not to happen.”The Lord also
reminded me that Jesus Himself did not cling to equality with God but humbled
Himself and took the position of a slave and was obedient [to His Father] even
to the point of death on the cross.Jesus accepted this poverty so that we could be rich in virtue.What we see modeled in the world of today is
anything but this kind of humility, this richness in virtue.

The choice is mine: to fight
to stay on “my high horse,” to remain “king of the mountain,” or to
follow the humble Lord, who was obedient to the Spirit of His Father guiding
Him throughout His life here on earth! Which spirit am I following: the spirit
of the world or the Spirit of God?

Monday, July 30, 2012

In today’s first reading,
Jeremiah 13: 1-11, the Lord tells us through the prophet that, “as close as the
loincloth clings to a man’s loins, so had I made the whole house of Israel and
the whole house of Judah [that includes you and me and all humankind] cling to
me,…; to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty. But they did not
listen.” Abandoning God, neglecting our faith and not taking time to develop
intimacy with the Lord, our faith deteriorates, as did the loin cloth that God
directed Jeremiah to hide in a cleft of the rock and leave it there for an
extended period of time. It rotted!

Faith, staying close to
the Lord, growing in intimacy, withers when we fail to nurture it. And what a
failure. When we stop listening to and
sharing everything about ourselves with our God, we also fail in our growth as God’s people, God’s renown, God’s praise, God’s
beauty.How do we nurture our
relationship with God? The same way we develop close relationships with one
another: by spending time with the one/s we love, by communicating honestly with
them, by being loyal to them, by developing a trusting and loving relationship
with them, saying sorry when we are wrong, listening, giving and receiving,
being generous of our time, talent and energy, serving the other for his/her
own sake.

God is always faithful to
us! Am I faithful to God? Has my relationship with God grown since first
receiving the faith or has it stagnated, faded, or, even rotted?

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Today’s Gospel relates a
parable of the Kingdom of Heaven being likened to a farmer planting wheat in his field whilean enemy, at night, strew weeds among the wheat(Mt 13: 24-30).When you and I were conceived, God planted a
seed, us! Each of us is a word of
the Word, containing the potential
to reach the greatness of being totally transformed into the image of God that
we are.In the Garden of Paradise Satan
planted seeds of disobedience and distrust of God—sin now exists in each one of
us alongside holiness.At every moment
of every day we are faced with the choice of choosing that which radiates the
face of God, reflects the image of God or that which is in opposition to God,
that is, the will of our egos which want to be their own god, be in control, and
dictate how to live in this world as gods.The ego distrusts anything but itself, obeys no one but itself, chooses
only itself. That is its nature.

The seed of God’s will,
God’s power, God’s creativity, God’s goodness, God’s grace within us is always
juxtaposed to Satan’s will that we be our own god, that we push God out of
sight, that we deny God, as Peter had done and seek to be on the throne, as
James and John did when requesting to be at Jesus’ right and left in the
Kingdom.

The choice is mine: do I give nourishment to the seed of grace, the seed
of holiness, the seed of humility, the seed of obedience, the seed of love, the
seed of reconciliation even unto death or do I feed the ego and sin in me:
putting others down and myself up, evading and hiding truth from myself and others,
ignoring or oppressing the poor as the rich man ignored Lazarus at his
gate,placing heavy burdens upon others
as the Pharisees had done with no intention of lightening the burdens I impose, etc.?

Friday, July 27, 2012

The sower sows seeds (Mt.
13:8).The smallest of seeds sown is the
mustard seed, a seed empowered to produce the largest of trees.A lot of growing power, significant strength
and endurance exist in that tiniest of seeds.The seed of the Word of God contains infinite power, almighty power,
divine power greater than any other power generated on this earth by humankind.The seed of the Word of God planted in a
heart open to God, respectful of God, eager for God will bear abundant fruit
that will last an eternity.At times we
may wonder, especially when nothing seems to be happening, when we bump into
the same weaknesses, seem to be making little or no progress in virtue. “Be
still and know that I am God,” the psalmist chides us.The seed of faith, hope and charity grows in
the stillness, in the darkness of “night”. God gives the growth, as St. Paul reminds us
in 1 Cor. 3: 5.

Am I willing to remain
open, to nurture the Seed, to water the Seed? Am I willing to cooperate with
God? Or am I too busy, got other things more important to do? Do I simply
ignore God’s Word speaking to me in my own being, through others, through the
Scriptures, the Liturgy, the homily, the events of my life, thus choking it,
leaving it to dry up on rocky soil? The
choice is mine.

The psalmist speak of God’s
awesome, all prevailing mercy, which “reaches to the heavens.” God’s “faithfulness,”
the psalmist reminds us, “to the clouds.”God’s “justice is like the mountains
of God; [God’s] judgments, like the mighty deep”(Psalm 36).If you and I, or any sinner, comes before God,God takes out his gavel and proclaims: “Not
guilty!”“What?” we ask in amazement.
God replies:“Your debt has been
forgiven. Your sin
is no more. It is erased, blotted out, forgiven.

Volumes of testimony
against the human race could be compiled to prove our guilt.Those volumes would reach into the farthest
depths of the earth and reach up into the farthest heights of the heavens.God’s mercy, on the other hand, would be
deeper and higher than any of our transgressions.“…TheOne sitting on the throne…[says to us], ‘Look,
I am making the whole of creation new. Then He …[says]..., ‘It has
already happened. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I
will give water from the well of life free to anybody who is thirsty; anyone
who proves victorious will inherit these things; and I will be his/[her] God and he[she] will be my son/[daughter].But the legacy for cowards, for those who
break their word, or worship obscenities, for murderers and the sexually
immoral, and for sorcerers, worshippers of false gods or any other sort of
liars, is the second death in the burning lake of sulphur.”(Revelation 21:5-8).

Obviously, the choice is
ours. God is not the one who proclaims us “Guilty”
nor the one who condemns us.
We do that to ourselves by the choices we make.What choices are you and
I going to make today?

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

“We hold …[a] treasure in
earthen vessels” (2 Cor 4:7).Because
Christ lives and breathes and moves within us and we in Him, we are “always
carrying about in…[our bodies] the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus…[His rising is also] manifested in our [bodies]” (2 Cor: 4: 5-6). What
does the dying and rising with Christ look like in our daily lives?Every day, like James and John in today’s
Gospel, we are faced with the temptation to be looking for that which this
world deems essential to our well-being—getting privileges, lording it over others, being number 1, etc.
and/or we come face to face with sin in
us, that is, with our envy, jealousy, deceitfulness, pride, selfishness , sloth
or unjustified anger.Dying means not
giving life to these tendencies, letting them die, and rising to new life in
Christ Jesus. Thus, when we encounter
sufferings that come with dealing with the worst in human nature, that which is
not of God, we have two choices: 1) to traverse the most travelled road or 2)
to choose the least traveled road where we are transformed into Christ by the
purifying fire ignited by the suffering itself, embracing the pain, addressing
it and resolving it as Christ resolved it: through love, forgiveness, and reconciliation with those with whom we are
at odds.Living in this way, our lives “cause…
thanksgiving to overflow for the glory of God’( 2 Cor 4: 15).Transformed into Christ by what we suffer in
living a life for and with God, “…the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise
us also with Jesus and place us…in his presence” (2 Cor 4:14).

Am I willing to live life
on this level of meaning and with this kind of faith?

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

In today’s first reading,
Micah 7: 14-15, 18-20, our God is described as One “who removes guilt,” “pardons
sins,” “delights…in clemency,” has “compassion on us,” treads our guilt
underfoot, “casts into the depths of the sea all our sins,” and shows His “faithfulness”
and “grace.”

Wow, what a God in
contrast to the gods of the nations that surrounded Israel—gods who were
anything but merciful, compassionate and forgiving.Over repeated transgressions of the covenant,
God remains faithful to the Chosen People, forming them into a “close-knit
family,” who can, then, open its doors freely to neighbors and outsiders,” (Stuhlmueller,
Carroll, O.P., Biblical Meditations for Ordinary Time—Weeks 10-22, Paulist
Press, NY, 1984, p. 124) without losing its identify as God’s people and being
prepared for Jesus’ message of inclusiveness; namely that all people“who do the Father’s will are brother and
sister and mother to Me” (Mt. 12: 50).

How firmly am I rooted in
my faith and my faith community?How
open am I to those whose beliefs differ
from mine? How inclusive am I of others who, like myself, hopefully, are doing
the will of the Father, when to what God is calling them differs from to what
God is calling me?Do I, like God, view
people through the lens of compassion, pardon, clemency and ways to make God’s
compassion a reality? Do I view the
world through the lensof God’s
faithfulness and grace? Or is my view narrowed by prejudice, exclusivity, shame
and guilt, the letter of the law, no matter what?

Monday, July 23, 2012

In today’s first
reading,Micah 6: 1-4, 6-8,the prophet spells out what the Lord requires
of us:Only to do the right and to love
goodness and to walk humbly with our God.God is not asking that we engage in a strict, ascetical penitential life
but that we choose what is right, embrace goodness, and live a life of
humility.No heroics, just simple
living, doing good things throughout the day: helping a person struggling to
bring a load of groceries up the stairs, preparing a meal for the people I
love, doing the laundry, pitching in to
get the dishes done so the whole family can relax, making a phone call to a
friend, helping a child with homework, taking time tolisten to what kind of day our
spouses/community members had, listening to someone overwhelmed with grief,
doing an honest day’s work, saying “thank you” to the person who bags my groceries,
etc.

As I reflected upon the
phrase “walk humbly with your God,” I was touched by the image. How can any one of us, mere human beings, walking side by side with
God, strut about like peacocks, saying by our demeanor: look at us,
how great we are! And yet, how often do we not do that.This is God walking beside us day and night,
counseling us, affirming us, challenging us, comforting us, strengthening us.

I then looked up Eccles. 3: 17, which reads:“My child, be gentle in carrying out your
business, and you will be better loved than a lavish giver. The greater you
are, the more humbly you should behave, and then you will find favor with the
Lord; for great though the power of the Lord is, he accepts the homage of the
humble.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

The responsorial psalm of
today’s liturgy, Ps. 10, voices the anguish of the people in Aurora, OH and all
of us agonizing over what took place there.It reads:

Why, O Lord, do you stand aloof?

Why hide in times of distress?

Proudly the wicked harass the afflicted,

who are caught in the devices the wicked have contrived….

He lurks in ambush near the villages;

in hiding he murders the innocent;

his eyes spy upon the unfortunate….

You do see, you behold misery and sorrow,

taking them in your hands,

on you the unfortunate [person] depends;

of the [parentless] you are the helper.

It may seem as though the
Lord is standing aloof. But is He? He Himself was slaughtered in that murderous
rampage, as Jesus tells us inMt.
25:40: “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren you do unto Me.” Every person killed, maimed, injured and
traumatized by James Holmes is a son/daughter of God. God dwells in each of
them and them in God. So God was not untouched by this murderous rampage and is
not standing aloof. Jesus' crucifixion was re-enacted in Aurora, OH. It is God who will come to the aid of the
brokenhearted, as the psalmist reminds us in Ps. 34: 18:“Yahweh
is near to the brokenhearted, he helps those whose spirit is crushed.”

May the people of Aurora
be comforted by the prayers of those of us not physically there to help. And
may those who can give hands-on assistance do so in Jesus’ name.

May James Holmes,
obviously a very sick man, get the help he needs to heal, to feel remorse and
repent of the crime that he committed. He destroyed his life, too, in that onslaught of anger and deeply wounded his parents.

Friday, July 20, 2012

In today Gospel,Mt. 12: 1-8, Jesus and his disciples are confronted by the
Pharisees for going through a field of grain on the Sabbath and picking the
heads of grain and eating them. The
Pharisees chastise Jesus for “doing what is unlawful to do on the Sabbath.”He tells them He “desires mercy, not
sacrifice.”How often, I thought, do I
not judge myself mercilessly, demanding sacrifice of myself and/or others, and not
being compassionate and understanding.I
asked Jesus to further instruct me. So I switched to my non-dominant hand and
began writing. The following is what came through my consciousness:

(Insert your name, doing what is right means being sensible and wise as theSpirit guides you.
That is what I did.I knew it was a Sabbath.And Sabbath laws were strict about what you could do and could not do on the Sabbath.

(Insert your name) , another person may have strict laws of
what you can and cannot do. You, too, may be strongly opposed to what is right or
wrong for another person.What you or the other person does not see is the
Spirit’s counsel and wisdom directing the other to make the choice he or she is
making.I was
taught those same laws the Pharisees were reciting to Me. There is then God’s
law written on
the heart that the Pharisees could not see. That law is written on every person’s
heart, including your own, and sometimes it brings you into the arena of opposing
forces that rear their heads within your own being or from the outside. Will
you follow
the Spirit’s call or back down, following a law, which at that moment, in mercyand love, needs to be broken?

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Jesus says to us in today’s
Gospel, Mt. 11: 28-30, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I
will give you rest….”

I got up this morning
dragging, feeling tired, longing for a day off, wanting a respite. I struggled
with these tired feelings and the request to surrender part of this coming
weekend to a community outing to benefit another member of my religious community.My insides were saying: “No, I have nothing
more to give, I have too much work to do, I haven’t caught up from being away
from my desk most of June, I need the weekend just for me.” I then decided to take today off, go for spiritual
direction, cook for the Sisters with whom I live (it’s my turn), keep a
scheduled dental appointment and spend the rest of the day relaxing!

I spent the hour of
prayer in silent gazing upon Christ, surrendering my burdens to Him. Whenever
my mind wandered, I’d gently came back to the passage and heard Jesus saying to
me: “I will give you rest.” I rose from that hour of prayer refreshed, ready to
go!

To whom to you take your
burdens? And how to you listen to your tired body?

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

As we read today’s first
reading, Is 10: 5-7, 13b-16, we might want to imagine how Jesus would say this
to us. I came up with the following imaginative conversation parallel to Isaiah’s
message to those who brought harm to Israel:

Dorothy Ann, nations rose up against my people Israel.
They boasted of their of

crimes against my people: raping women, killing those
left as orphans following

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

A message from my recent retreat: My retreat opened with the Lord leading me to psalm 139: "I am wonderfully made." The thought came to me that all of us are created to radiate God's glory and that everything in our lives visits us for that same reason. Every person we encounter, all of the situations in which we engage are meant to both reveal God's glory to us and to be an vehicle through which we give glory to God. With that thought, I surrendered all of my concerns to the Lord and I prayed that I may glorify the Lord, serve the Lord in whatever I do or say and in the person I am becoming. The following prayer surfaced:

Lord, in Your on-going creaton of me, I give you:

the good and the bad,

the beautiful and the ugly

the impatient and the patient,

the vitriolic and the serene,

the selfish and the unselfish,

to be the clay that you use

to remold, reshape, and recreate

me into the woman you call me to become:

another Christ.

What do you give the Lord today and where, today, did you see the glory of God revealed?﻿

Monday, July 16, 2012

In today’s Gospel, Mt 10:
34-11:1, Jesus says to us: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon
the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set
a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law, and one’s enemies will be those of his household.”I said to the Lord: “Wow, that statement is
enough to turn everyone away from Christianity and from reading the Bible.”I imagined the Lord saying to me:

“Dorothy
Ann, I know those words are harsh.The
Son of God took on human natureto save each person from death. To reverse
that sentence of death, which Satan thrustupon the world by his lies, would entail “the
sword” of grace, violence toward evil, and the strength
to stand by Truth to follow God’s ways in the face of fierce opposition fromthose who are closest to you—family members.
Truth confronts falsehood mainly within the
family. Choosing my Father’s will, many times, comes in conflict with family members
who insist on a choice that is contrary to whatGod is asking of a
son/daughter, a daughter/son-in-law.Tempers fly even to the point of imprisonment
and bloodshed, lawsuits andlegal wrangling. It happened to me; it will happen
to my disciples. And in today’s world that is
attempting to destroy the Sacred, division within families—natural, liturgical,
politicaland religious—is increasing.

Hold
fast to the faith you have been given!

What a clear message of
what this passage could mean.It made
sense to me. What about you?

Friday, July 13, 2012

My retreat was awesome,
as retreats tend to be; awesome in God’s gentle urging of me to look deeply
into me and to allow God to gaze deeply as well.It opened, as most retreats open for me, God
suggesting that I look at Ps. 139 where I am reminded that I am wonderfully
made.The thought came that, even in God’s
ongoing creation of me, I am wonderfully made: He uses the good and the bad, the
beautiful and the ugly, the patient and impatient parts of me, the selfish and
the unselfish, the vitriolic and the serene. He shapes and reshapes, molds and
remolds.Where is all of this coming
from, you ask? Well, on July 2, three days before
going on retreat, I returned from three weeks vocation work in Trinidad, but my
suitcase with everything in it that I needed for retreat went to Canada. The
ticket agent tagged it with the wrong tag, I discovered when nothing showed up
in Newark. Nothing showed up on the 3rd or 4th of July either, as
promised. So I purchased some items I could not go
without and borrowed clothes from someone who wears an extra large (my size is
medium).I get a few miles from the
retreat center, stop at an oasis service station and decide that I am not going
to look like a ragamuffin. So I purchased a couple of medium-size tee shirts. I
return to NJ on the 12th of July. Still no suitcase. Toronto, Canada
wants proof that I travelled on July 2nd! Customs will not release
the luggage!So the worst of me surfaces—the
vitriolic part of me, a raging anger, patience turned ugly.Where were the graces of a six-day retreat. I
felt anything but holy, believe me. But, yes, I am wonderfully made.The Lord reminded me, when I complained of
how sinful I was, that the instruments He uses always need purification. “I
needed to purify Peter in his denials, Thomas in his doubting, James and John in
their search for privilege, all of the apostles in their fear of persecution,
opposition and martyrdom….I purified them with the fire of imperfection, sinful
inclinations, selfishness, pride, insecurity, and false ambitions. That is the
fuel for the decomposition—the “burning bush” that never is really burned." The purifying fire of God's love and forgiveness does not destroy, God reminded me. And, yes, He uses my sinfulness to reshape me, remold me, recreate me into His image. Hope never fades.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

I will be on retreat with
the Lord for the next 8 days, so I will not be blogging during that time. This
is the most wonderful time of every year for me. I cannot think of doing anything
better or greater than taking a vacation with the Lord.He and I will walk through the Scriptures
together—it will be like an Emmausjourney. We will walk through the gardens and woods together, as God did
with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise.It is simply the most cherished time of every year for me.

Will be back blogging on
the Scriptures when I return from retreat on July 13th.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Today is the feast of St.
Thomas, the Apostle, a Martyr for his faith. It was Thomas who said to the
apostles that he would not believe that the Lord had risen from the dead unless
he put his hands in his side and his finger into the print of the nails.We refer to Thomas as the Doubter. What if we
took another look at Thomas as one who did not follow the crowd, was not a
pushover, did his own thinking, shared
his own truth.He did not hide his
doubts, as did the other apostles.The
others doubted as much as he did, would not believe the women when they
returned from the tomb and told them that they had seen the Lord and he was
risen. Nordid the other apostles
believe the disciples from Emmaus when they, too, reported that the Lord was alive and spoke with them.

Who would you or I be? A pushover,
one who says what everyone else says because they said it, one who says what “the
authority” said (Peter was the one with the authority) because authority said
it whether we believed it or not, one who hid his/her truth or his/her doubt,
as most of the apostles did? Or would we have the humility to acknowledge our
doubt as Thomas did? Would we change our position when the truth was revealed
to us, as Thomas did when he fell to his knees and said: “My Lord and my God!” “You
were right and I was wrong.”

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Today’s Gospel, Mk 5: 21-43, reveal a God of love and
compassion,a God who cares about each
one of us. Jairus, a synagogue official, approaches Jesus and asked that he
heal his daughter who is dying. A huge crowd is following Jesus. A woman haemorrhaging
for twelve years, having exhausted her means in various failed and painful treatments,
touches the hem of Jesus’ garmentand is
healed. He knows that power left Him and turns around and asks: “Who touched
me?”When the woman, trembling, comes
forth and tells Him her story, He says to her: “Woman, your faith has saved
you.”God knows when we approach Him. He
also knows when power leaves Him and changes our lives. Our God is a personal God,
not a distant God. God’s personableness and gentleness are also revealed in His
healing of Jairus’ twelve-year-old daughter, who is “dead,” according to the people who had been keeping vigil at Jairus’
house. Jesus goes to her room and says to the little girl: “Talitha koum,”
which means “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” She does so and Jesus tells the
family to get her something to eat. What caring and what attention to detail in
terms of need. That is who God is!How
do you experience the personableness, the tenderness, the gentleness, God’s
individual attention in your life?